Situated in Gauteng, the smallest and most densely populated province in South Africa, El Tabernacle is around half an hour from the centre of Johannesburg. Faced with considerable acoustic challenges, church elder Gustav Adams approached Richard Smith of local technical production specialists Sound Harmonics for advice on solving them.
"As part of a complete technical revamp of the building, I was asked to come up with an overall plan to achieve high quality, clear and powerful sound," explains Richard. "When sizing up a project like this, I like to analyse both the client's need as well as the hurdles posed by the space itself in a step by step process that allows me to hone in on the best product."
Richard proposed L-Acoustics KARAi and SB18i for the compact footprint and light weight, coupled with enough SPL to cover the entire space, and most importantly, be heard over the congregation.
Richard's design features a main system of nine KARAi and four SB18i per side, with the subs being flown in cardioid configuration. Fills comprise a centre cluster of two ARCS Wide in a horizontal configuration, plus another ARCS Wide per side as front fills, augmented by a 12XTi outfill per side.
A comprehensive monitoring setup includes four 12XTi and two 8XTi for the pastor, further pairs of 12XTi for the choir and side-fills, with two more 8XTi for the church elders. The entire system is powered by LA4, LA4x and LA8 amplified controllers.
Modelling everything in L-Acoustics Soundvision 3D acoustical simulation software was crucial to the project.
Apostle Roscoe and the church elders have pronounced themselves very happy with the system, with its size and the aesthetics coming in for as much praise as the seamless coverage and sound quality. "The system looks good and the client is ecstatic that we could supply it in white. In many ways the church is quite conservative and the ability to blend the speakers into the background was very important," says Richard.
The church has been so satisfied with the system that they will soon add 5XTs to create a low level distributed nearfield monitor system for the choir and band, further enhancing the experience of services for the performers.
(Jim Evans)
